Erica Frantz
Appearances
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
That is an excellent example. And I'm going to take note of that because it does illustrate a lot of the dynamics that we point out in the book. It is very important that political elites see a career outside of the leader.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And so when these leaders appoint their friends and loyalists to these key positions of power, those individuals know that they pretty much only have that position so long as they stay in the good favor of the leader. They don't have years of experience to fall back on to ensure that they can get a political post elsewhere.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So, when leaders are able to select these individuals to surround them in their support group, they pretty much know that these individuals are not going to push back against anything that they promote. And in fact, in some instances, they might endorse things that they know are unhealthy for democracy.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So in that way, the lack of experience can be very harmful for democracy because there's little incentive for these individuals to push back against the leader. And on top of it, they tend to not have the same political experience when it comes to collectively organizing to push back against the leader.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So we think about capacity in a couple ways. One is that we know, using anecdotal evidence and so forth, that when individuals don't have much experience working with one another and don't have much experience in politics in general, that they don't have the political sophistication, let's say, to know how to collectively act against the leader.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And then the other thing that we can look at is the party structure in terms of the strength of local party organizations. Ideally, you want a party to be this robust political organization where there are local organizations that are strong and where it is not super top-heavy. And instead, with personalist parties, we see very top-heavy politics.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And we can show in the data that with personalist parties, the leader is more likely to control nominations and where political actors are fearful that if they depart from that individual's messaging, that they are going to be unlikely to win political office. So basically more likely to steer the careers of party officials and party members.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And then on top of it, we know that these leaders are also more likely to personally fund the political party. And so right from the get-go, if the leader is playing a dominant role in funding the political party, they're going to have disproportionate influence. They can control the direction of the party. And a good example of that would be from Georgia with Ivanishvili and the Georgian Dream.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
He's this billionaire individual who was able to create the Georgian Dream, personally funds it, and we've seen significant Democratic backsliding in Georgia as well. So both capacity and incentive are important for understanding when we're going to see incumbent parties push back.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
In some instances, they have little reason to want to do so because they have no political future outside of the leader's longevity. In other instances, they really don't have the tools to be able to do much to challenge the leader besides defect and leave the party and threaten their own career.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So, yes, it's true that in some instances leaders have used money to gain influence and Trump has certainly used his dominating media presence to gain influence. But I think that that's fairly similar actually to Bukele in El Salvador. who won power with this newly formed party and then was really, really effective at using social media to establish a brand, to get out of his messaging.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
He was able to sideline traditional political institutions by just resorting to social media to put out his message. And he's very much an attention seeker, just like Trump. He brands himself as this kind of ordinary cool guy, I guess you could say, with his baseball hats that he wears at his events. And he's really obsessed with media attention in ways that are similar to Trump.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So I think that there are multiple routes that you can get this sort of influence over your political system. But the core thing that is in alignment in all these places is that we don't see political elites envision a future outside of the leader's influence.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Yeah, that's an excellent observation about the intricate ways in which the business community has aligned with Trump. So I study authoritarian politics primarily, and corruption is very common in authoritarian politics. It's kind of the norm. Democracies are not immune from corruption either. But what we see is that particularly in personalist dictatorships where power is really concentrated—
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
that corruption plays an important role in enabling the leader to distribute perks to their base of supporters. So in these really personalist places, leaders rely on a fairly narrow group of supporters to maintain power. So they don't need the support of everybody. They just need the loyalty of a select group of individuals.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So what they do is ensure that these individuals have access to the perks of power. And this often happens in a corrupt fashion. One of the things that's interesting to observe is that corruption can also help the leader gain greater control over these individuals.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So there's a quote from Mexico during its authoritarian regime in the 20th century that a politician who stays poor is poor at politics. And that gets at the fact that, you know, many politicians are going to be corrupt in an authoritarian system. So it's not unusual that they take the bait and engage in these corrupt activities, but
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But once the leader, you know, has established this relationship, ensuring that these individuals are getting the spoils of office in a corrupt fashion, the leader kind of owns them. Because at any moment that the leader suddenly questions their loyalty or grows suspicious of their intentions—
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
they can charge those individuals with corruption and purge them by saying that, oh, this person was engaged in corruption. We saw Xi Jinping do this with his big anti-corruption effort a while back, where he went after his big opponents. But we see it in a lot of other personalist environments where corruption is used strategically.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
The leader is relying on corruption to secure the support of key elites and also owns these elites by virtue of this because he has access to information about their illicit activities that they can use at any moment to purge these people from positions of power, imprison them and so forth.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Sure. So I don't know all of the details of, you know, Biden's relationship with the super rich or of Russia's relationship with the oligarchs. But in general, we think about corruption as an abuse of public office for private gain.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So usually robust institutionalized democracies like the United States have a lot of rules in place to ensure that public officials can't use those posts for private gain. It doesn't mean that these things aren't always breached. You know, I'm sure that there is corruption in the United States, not nearly the degree to which there is in Russia.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But in general, there are some sort of processes for ensuring that this doesn't happen. And those processes are, for the most part, respected. In a place like Russia, under Putin, there are all sorts of breaches of these rules and all sorts of funneling of money overseas into overseas accounts.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Researchers have done studies on Russian legislators and tried to measure corruption among those individuals, and they have been able to identify a disconnect between what the salaries are of those legislators and the types of cars that they're driving. So we have more solid evidence that there is private gain happening among these individuals in these public posts.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
These corrupt legislators that are driving the fancy cars in Russia are less likely to show up to vote for individual policies and more likely to support regime legislation. But, you know, there isn't a ton of research that has looked at some of the synergies that you're talking about with political the ways in which backsliding elites have aligned with the business community.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
We do know that in existing authoritarian contexts like Hungary and Russia, that leaders are able to build these really close linkages with elites in the business community, often through corruption, that can be helpful for these regimes. But there's not a lot, to my knowledge, that gets at the way in which it can facilitate the process of backsliding.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
You know, I actually had not thought about tariffs from that perspective, but that's pretty spot on, actually, in that in general, where we see greater state intervention in the economy, it creates opportunities for corruption. It creates opportunities to establish deals and give access to networks where officials can store their money overseas and all sorts of things lie on the books.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
The list is fairly long of the ways in which governments can take advantage of those state interventions. So from that perspective, yeah, it certainly does generate more opportunities for corruption if there is greater state intervention in the economy and tariffs would fall under that category.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
It does seem like there has been a shift, at least observationally, for all the reasons that you just mentioned, in that it looks like we're entering an era of court politics where everyone is flying to go get the ear of the new leader.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And it's not something that we're familiar with in the past, where all sectors of the business community are descending in Mar-a-Lago to try to get Trump's attention. And I think that this is really a reflection of an understanding that what Trump wants is what's going to happen. And that if you don't get into his good favor, that you're not going to get what you want.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And you could even potentially be punished. So it's unclear what sorts of attacks Trump is going to implement against his opponents. But the overall energy is one in which most people have the impression that if you're against Trump, you might be persecuted in some way, that he might try to go after you, that your business could be at risk. So there's that component of it.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And also, I think there's an extra layer where, in some ways, many key sectors of society in the U.S. have kind of given up, I guess, for lack of a better word, in terms of, you know, trying to push back against what Trump's vision is for society here and have instead decided that it's in their interest to get on board with
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
All of this kind of falls outside of my area of expertise in terms of analyzing some of the intricacies of what's happening with Trump and the business community. But the major thing that would come to the fore is this kind of sense of court politics where everybody's trying to get around the leader, flatter the leader to ensure that their business futures and political futures are intact.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Well, it basically means a situation where you can envision, you know, a monarch and the members of their court sitting around the throne on bended knee, there to flatter the monarch, there to make sure that, you know, that everything that the monarch wants is implemented. You know, I often think about the story, you know, of the emperor with no clothes.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
That sort of dynamic translates to these settings. And it's, again, I've talked earlier about disproportionate political influence, but The monarch is in the throne lofty above these other individuals. And you can visualize that sort of power dynamic. And that's what we see in places where power is concentrated.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Yeah, that's a really interesting insight there about the broadening. And it makes sense because in these places with more concentrated power, we do see more volatile policy choices. And that's because policies are based on the whims of the leader. And if a particular leader happens to stick to an ideological platform, then you might not see so much dramatic change.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But leaders can change their minds very quickly. You know, in Turkmenistan, which is very different than the United States, the leader there, Sepimur Niyazov, in his court, was his former dentist, who ended up succeeding him, I believe. So they're really going after people who they think are going to be their loyal advocates.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And even if those people have kind of bizarre ideas or ideas that are counter to what you might expect, If they're in the leader's ear, we might see those policies implemented. In this instance, with the skilled immigrants, you know, that might be something that economists would say is good for the health of the economy in the U.S. So it might not always be a bad choice.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But the fundamental problem with these leaders, these personalist leaders, is that there's no predictability in terms of what they might choose to pursue. And oftentimes, they make bad choices.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So that's an excellent insight. And there are some really nice parallels to authoritarian politics in that personalist leaders in those contexts often pursue what we call divide and conquer as a strategy. So it is intentional that they want a divided elite. They don't want any risk that the individuals around them could behind their back coalesce to challenge them.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So from the perspective of a power-hungry leader, you want to have a less cohesive internal circle. You want people to fear that, you know, they're in a game of musical chairs. You know, the smallest sign of disloyalty, that person's going to lose their office. They want to create an environment of total uncertainty among those in their elite circle.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And one way that they do that is by, again, like pursuing this game of musical chairs. I think I mentioned the study from Russia that shows that the legislators that are in the pocket of the Putin regime are actually rotated out of office fairly quickly. They gain office, are in the legislature, get a few luxury cars, and then they leave power.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And, you know, this musical chairs is intentional because they are ensuring that individuals can't coalesce. to join forces to challenge them, that they're divided, and that they aren't very powerful as individuals, that no individual is very powerful apart from the leader.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Yeah, so you've identified a number of things that are fairly troubling in terms of like from a democracy expert perspective. And that is that we might think of the media as like a fourth branch of government. The media play a critical role in keeping our leaders in check. And calling out corruption scandals and all sorts of things.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And so the obsession that we are observing from Trump in terms of ensuring that nothing negative is stated about him, even if it's something as minor as the poll, as you mentioned, is troubling because that's a classic part of the playbook. where we nearly always see these leaders that are intent on securing more control target the media.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And they're either going to do it by sidelining the media, either through lawsuits, as you mentioned, that could bankrupt them, or by gaining more control over the media. We saw this with Orban in Hungary, where now the media in Hungary are pretty much fully under the Orban regime's control.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Circling back to the bankruptcy thing, though, I did want to mention, it's interesting you said that, because in Singapore, under the People's Action Party, one way that they are able to prevent their opponents from gaining much influence is by suing them in these libel lawsuits that bankrupt these individuals.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So by targeting these individuals through these kind of minor libel lawsuits, they're able to bankrupt them and minimize the threat. And that's kind of this very effective tactic because it's not this like super easily observable red flag that democracy is falling apart.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But it is a subtle thing that accumulates to a larger problem where if there are enough of these media organizations that go out of business or that are self-censoring, that we no longer have that kind of fourth check on the executive that I mentioned.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So I tend to think that the personality of the leader is unimportant and that instead politics is an outcome of institutions and institutional bargaining and things and relationships and so forth. But one thing that we do observe is that when individual politicians personalize their party, let's say, that type of power and influence tends to lead to more narcissistic behavior.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So rather than seeing like this underlying narcissism as something that is going to predict power concentration, I think it's important to identify the ways in which power can shift the attributes of these leaders. And they tend to become obsessed with their own image and obsessed with the ways in which they're portrayed in the media. This is not something that is unique to Trump.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
We see it in a variety of contexts, particularly in authoritarian contexts, where leaders become obsessed with their own image. They build these personality cults. There's stories in Mobutu Zaire of him on the news making sure that he was descending from the heavens on the nightly news every day. So that is part of this personality cult, an obsession with having a positive image in the media.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So leaders don't want news headlines that are critical of them, right? It is going to be a challenge. And Trump has been very savvy at navigating the media, right? And at developing his own media company and so forth, similar to the ways in which Bukele has been really savvy.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And perhaps Bukele has been even more effective in that we haven't seen the same sort of general societal concern for his relationship with the media. that we do here. But regardless, there is this obsession that we see in lots of these incumbents that degrade democracy with the way in which they're portrayed. And in some ways, it is somewhat comical.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But in other ways, it's something we should take fairly seriously because it degrades the ability of the media in many instances to speak truthfully. So on the one hand, we've seen that leaders who are at the helm of personalist parties Once they get elected, the chance of democratic erosion and backsliding goes up considerably.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And the playbook that they use to undermine democracy follows a similar format.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Yeah, so probably one of the first regimes where we saw this play out that got some media attention would be Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. And since then, we've seen a number of other places experience similar dynamics like Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orban in Hungary. The list is actually really long of these democratically elected leaders taking over power.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And in places like Chavez's Venezuela, we often forget that Venezuela had been one of the strongest democracies in Latin America when Chavez got elected in 1998. So we have this very robust democracy, and this leader comes to power via free and fair elections. He had created his own movement to back him, this Chavista movement, the name of which has shifted over time.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And slowly he started to implement policies that gave him greater control and that undermined the power of his opponents. And this included things like messing with the judiciary. And by that, I mean changing the rules so that Chavez could ensure that he had more loyalists in key judicial positions. Leaders in other countries have done a variety of things to take control over the judiciary.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
They have changed things like the age that a judge must be to retire to ensure that there's some forced retirement so they can staff the courts with their loyalists. They also go after the media. And either they... take over existing media outlets and staff them with their supporters, or they sideline the traditional media and basically see it as some sort of evil operated against them.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
They also implement policies that make it more difficult for their opponents to win office. And then what we see is that over time, the ability of these traditional institutional checks on the executive to constrain the leader degrade, and eventually leaders start messing with the electoral process, which is the kind of fundamental core of a democracy, and we see democracy erode.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So, I'm really glad you asked that, actually, because... When Trump got elected in 2016, you know, I study authoritarian politics and democratic backsliding. And at the time, there wasn't too much interest in my research, right? So at least not from, you know, journalists covering American politics. And...
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
At the time, it seemed like everyone was really quick to say that democracy is falling apart in the U.S. So we have democratic backsliding happening in Hungary and Turkey and Poland, and certainly it's going to happen here. And I kind of pushed back against that because there were a couple of factors that the U.S. had going for it.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
We know that countries that have really long experiences with democracy are less likely to backslide and that countries that are wealthier are less likely to backslide. So democracy in the U.S. should be fairly protected. And I did think at the time that the chance of backsliding in the U.S. was somewhat higher than it had been in years past, let's say.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But overall, we were at a far lower risk than, say, a place like Venezuela or But then the big shift that happened was really circling back to personalism again, but the control that Trump got over the Republican Party since he even that he left power in 2020. And so that was a critical shift.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
On the one hand, it was a big positive that Trump's efforts to stay in office after losing the election in 2020, they failed, right, because of the Republican Party, and in particular, Vice President Pence. So that was a big testing point for American democracy. And, you know, we got through that one.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But the critical red flag to me is that the Republican Party has a majority in the legislature this time and that Trump has really established full control over the party. So the key things to be paying attention to in the years to come are mainly in the months to come, to be quite frank. We want to see how is the Republican Party going to settle following this election?
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
We've already witnessed a number of divisions within the Republican Party. Well, how is that all going to play out? Are we going to see key elites throw up their hands and say, you know what, there's nothing we can do. We have to get fully behind Trump. Are we going to see all of these nominations of some of these bizarre and inexperienced nominees go through in the Senate?
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Or are we going to see intense divide play out? And from the perspective of the democracy expert over here, we want the Republican Party to be more divided. We want to see some sort of thorough discussion of some of these things. So that's like probably the first thing on the horizon.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And then moving forward, the additional things to look at are the way in which the Trump administration engages with the judiciary. So are we going to see any efforts to mess with the judiciary in ways that ensure more loyalists are within key courts? And then are we also going to see further attacks on the media and efforts to silence and sideline the media?
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
I guess I should mention a third thing as well. Trump has made some statements that he intends to go after some of his political opponents once he gets power. Are we going to see that play out? Those are the key things in the authoritarian playbook that we're used to seeing. And are we going to see him go after Liz Cheney, let's say? Those would be some red flags to look for in the years to come.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Personalist politics is where we see leaders have disproportionate political influence vis-a-vis other key institutional actors. And we can see it manifest in both democracies and dictatorships. It looks slightly different in the latter.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
You know, yeah, that's a great question. And there is not a lot of research on successful opposition movements to Democratic backsliding. This is kind of a new field. So we don't have a strong sense of what the core features are of opposition groups that are successful in pushing back against backsliding. But there are a couple of things that we know that one of which might be fairly obvious.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So where opposition parties are divided, they're going to be less likely to be successful in pushing back. And it's important to note that oftentimes the very attacks on democracy that the leader is pursuing can split the opposition because it can create all this uncertainty in terms of how to respond, kind of what you're mentioning here with the Democratic Party.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So we know that a split up and fragmented opposition is going to be less likely to be effective. But the other key thing to point out is that when we see Democratic backsliding, it's really tempting to look to the opposition and say, okay, you need to do something to prevent this. Like, this is the key group that's going to prevent this from happening.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But it's really difficult for opposition parties to do much when they lose majority representation in the legislature. Once we see these parties get a majority in the legislature, the door is often really wide open for the leader to do what he wants to do. From the get-go, it was pretty clear that Bukele was going to be trouble for democracy once he won election in 2019.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But things didn't really gain momentum until the legislative elections in 2021, where his Nueva Ideas party got the legislative majority. And right after that, he started fiddling with the judiciary in ways that advantaged him. So the opposition can sound the alarm bell that democracy is under threat and all of these things.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But those calls are going to be pretty impotent if they lack legislative representation.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But essentially, rather than seeing politics being part of this bargaining process through elites and the leader, we see that the leader is basically determining most outcomes.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Yes, it is precisely because the Republican Party is different than it was in 2017. We now have individuals completely fearful that if they don't get in line behind Trump, they're not going to get the party nomination. That is just a very different political landscape than a few years ago. And I agree with you that the term personalist is definitely overused and perhaps not super flashy.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
It's also true that a personalist party is kind of a boring term. And that's one of the interesting messages that comes out of it, that if we want to help support democratic health globally— We need to help build political parties, which sounds super boring.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But it turns out that this old school political concept of political party is really valuable for preserving and protecting executive constraints and helping democracies flourish. And I fully agree that there is a bit of fatigue about saying, oh, Trump's harmful for democracy and a new Trump term is going to be so bad. And I think a lot of ordinary people are kind of tired of that messaging.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But if we zoom out and think about, okay, well, what does the evidence show about when a leader has this much influence over their political party and when they have a legislative majority? And the reality is that the chance of democratic collapse goes up fairly dramatically.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And that's taken into account a ton of other factors, levels of wealth, political polarization, whether citizens support democracy and so forth. So from that perspective, this shift in the Republican Party where it's just Trump's party and the fact that we have the Republican legislative majority is really an alarm bell.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Sure. So first, I would recommend Jessica Weeks, who has a book called Dictators at War and Peace. And this is our go-to book for explaining why personalist dictatorship is bad for foreign policy. So it's a very good read. I also would recommend Javier Corrales, who has a book called Autocracy Rising. And this is this really detailed exploration of how Venezuela's democracy fell apart.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And given that that was like one of the first incumbent takeovers that we paid attention to and has been a model for subsequent ones, it has a lot of really interesting information in it. And then lastly, for some levity, I would recommend Cody Walker's poetry book called The Trumpiad from, I think, 2016 or 2017.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And it has a collection of poems that are very humorous that I think could provide some optimism, I guess, in some pessimistic more times.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Right. So it's all relative. In general, most political leaders are disproportionately influential over other political actors. But what matters here is the degree to which they have that sort of influence. So certainly we could say that Barack Obama was very influential in American politics, but not nearly to the degree of, say, Vladimir Putin in Russia.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
where all political choices are at the whims of Putin and no other actors can challenge him. And even in authoritarian systems, some regimes are significantly more personal and leadership-centric than others. So we might think of Singapore under the People's Action Party as an authoritarian regime,
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But most ordinary people wouldn't even know the name of the leader of Singapore because the party is so central to that regime. And that's in stark contrast to places like Putin's Russia or Erdogan's Turkey and so forth. So it's really a matter of degree. And I can get into, if you'd like, the ways in which we can measure these sorts of things.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But in general, we're looking at the type of bargaining that's happening between leaders and elites and the degree to which elites can serve as a constraint on the leader's choices.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Yeah, sure. So ideally, you want a political party to be based on a clear policy program. And in a traditional programmatic party, we would see elites really caring about the long-term reputation of the party. And in personalist parties, instead, we see elites really fearful of appearing to fall out of favor with the leader.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So it's a very different institutional dynamic where parties are personalists than where they aren't. And you mentioned the Republican Party, which is a traditional American political party and has had for many years a very clear conservative policy platform. It's shifted somewhat, but... Today, we now see a Republican Party that's really centered on whatever Trump feels like promoting.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And this evolution of the Republican Party is consistent with trends that we're seeing globally. And I'm really glad that you mentioned that, you know, the focus should be less on the individual and more on the institutions. Because to me, it's been somewhat frustrating, the degree to which observers have focused on Trump as a person.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And from my perspective, I have, I guess, more of a pessimistic outlook that most political leaders try to become more influential. But what matters is the degree to which institutions can check them. And, you know, observers have noted for a number of years now that incumbent takeovers or autocratizations or whatever term you want to use are on the rise.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So rather than seeing coups being the way that democracy is dismantled, we are instead seeing elected leaders slowly chip away at democratic institutions to consolidate power.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And the common theme in many of these incumbent takeovers is that the leader is supported by a personalist party where the party is basically geared around their career prospects rather than these kind of clear policy programs.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Yeah, so I think it is very important to zoom out and see what's happening globally, to have some sense of whether this is normal or not. So usually these are parties that the leader created or was a founding member of. So what was slightly unusual with Trump is that he basically leveraged these fissures in the Republican Party to kind of co-opt it.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So on the one hand, it's unusual that Trump was able to personalize this kind of longstanding traditional party. Usually leaders create these parties. And then the other thing that was somewhat unusual was that oftentimes when we have elections that are somewhat troubling or where you're worried about backsliding, it's
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
It's because you think that the leadership group is going to somehow fiddle with the elections in ways that benefit them. And with Trump, he was alleging fraud against him, which is kind of the opposite direction that we usually would see. We did see in Brazil under Bolsonaro that he started to follow that kind of new model.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
But apart from that, everything that has happened with Trump in the direction of democracy in the U.S. and with his policy choices and cabinet appointments is really, really consistent with trends globally. You know, you mentioned that the party doesn't even look nearly as programmatic as it did during his first term. So we've seen a shift in that regard where it's no longer quite so predictable.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And that's not to say that parties don't shift their policies. But that it is somewhat more of a predictable program where other elites have some sense of what the party is going to promote. Under Trump's Republican Party, I think frequently Republican politicians don't really know what Trump's stance is going to be and therefore what the party's stance is going to be on political issues.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So the research shows that as personalism in the party increases, the number of years of political and governing experience declines among the key elites. So there's a pretty strong connection there. And when these leaders create parties, and again, the Republican Party is somewhat anomalous there in that Trump did not create it, but they usually staff it with friends and family members.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
And a really good example of that is El Salvador with Bukele. where he created Nueva Ideas. And first, I believe it was his childhood friend that was the head of the party. Today, it's his cousin. Many family members have key positions of power, and yet none of them had any governing or political experience. And that's pretty common because leaders...
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
tend to prioritize loyalty over competence where they can. We see that in authoritarian politics all the time. The problem, however, is that, as you might expect, it's not good for decision making to be surrounded by a bunch of sycophants. You want some sort of checks on some of these choices that leaders might float around. You want experience to inform the choices that leaders make.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
So when we see these leaders kind of become surrounded by yes-men, we see a lot of really bad policy choices that often have really harmful foreign policy outcomes. In terms of the discussion of Trump...
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
Some of the ideas of the cabinet nominees that have been floated or published or announced, what have you, are very much consistent with what we would expect with a personalist leader in that we are seeing loyalty prioritized over competence. And it will be very important for the health of democracy in the U.S.,
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
if the Republican Party stands up to some of these cabinet nominees and pushes back against it. We've seen some of it play out in the media since Trump won the election, where there is some discord. And to me, that is pretty important and something to really look to moving forward.
The Ezra Klein Show
Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
That, you know, we want our cabinet officials and attorney generals and all these people to have political experience that's relevant to the job. It's a very important not only a check on Trump, but also it's an important constraint in terms of ensuring that we don't have really volatile policies coming out.